Judge postpones confession decision in homicide trial

A decision of whether or not a defendant’s confession can be heard by the jury in a murder trial scheduled to begin next week won’t be decided until after jurors report for duty.

Presiding Judge Charles Henry announced in court Thursday afternoon that due to other matters that need to be addressed in court Friday, the motions hearing will reconvene Monday, said District Attorney Ernie Lee.

Jurors will report Monday morning, and Lee said Henry told the courtroom that jurors will then be excused for the hearing to resume, with jury selection beginning after the motions hearing is finished.

Videos of April 16, 2013, the day Larry Forrest, 25, then a Camp Lejeune Marine, was arrested, began playing first thing Thursday morning as the previous day’s courtroom proceedings picked up where the prosecution left off.

Lee had Special Agent Michael Groom take the stand once more to offer explanations for the videos and audio played, his voice on the recordings mingling with that of the defendant’s.

Before taking his second officer-accompanied cigarette break and after a failed attempt to get a lawyer on the phone, Forrest told law enforcement he wanted to talk.

Forrest is accused of fatally shooting 65-year-old Kim Hua Flournoy on Dec. 30, 2012, outside of TNT Beach Bingo on Henderson Drive in Jacksonville. Flournoy was a mother and a grandmother, the widow of Marine. In 2012, she worked at Camp Lejeune.

On the video, Forrest told Groom he would feel more comfortable when he knew his wife, Shannon, would OK. Law enforcement had brought her into custody earlier that day under a traffic violation but had not told her why she was there, according to the Motion to Suppress document filed by the defense.

The defense argued in the document that law enforcement used psychological tactics to produce a confession from Forrest, including having Forrest’s wife in the interview room next to them and allowing the couple to believe she’d been brought into custody because of Flournoy’s death.

Groom promised Forrest that if his wife had nothing to do with the shooting, nothing would happen to her.

Forrest broke down in the interview room, audibly crying and holding his head in his hands.

Through regained composure, he told the detective, “I thought I was backed into a corner financially.”

He’d used money for drugs to cope with life, Forrest said.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, sir,” Forrest said.

He began the story two days before Flournoy was shot. On the stand, Groom said Forrest’s term, “caught a cab driver,” was slang for a robbery or theft on the streets. The Onslow County Sheriff’s Office had investigated an armed robbery of a Tarheel Taxi.

Then, on Dec. 30, 2012, Forrest told the detective he and two others saw Flournoy getting money out of the ATM on Piney Green near Food Lion, then followed her to Bingo.

Using the same gun used in the taxi cab robbery, Forrest said the gun just went off during the altercation.

“I got scared,” he told the detective. “I ran off.”

The defense filed the motion to suppress the confession on Nov. 22, which would prevent the jury from seeing or hearing the video during the trial, claiming that Forrest repeatedly asked for a lawyer and had not spoken with one before his confession.